


It's Just a Dream

by ShadowPorpoise



Series: Underfakers [4]
Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dreamtale (Undertale), Amnesia, Angst, Brotherly Angst, Brotherly Love, Childhood Trauma, Dissociation, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Family Drama, Flashbacks, Fluff and Angst, Friendship, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Memory Loss, Nightmares, No Plot/Plotless, No Romance, No Smut, Not Canon Compliant, Part 4, Psychological Trauma, Sequel, Series, Sharing a Body, Suicidal Thoughts, Trauma, Trust Issues, Verbal Abuse, Violence, four years later
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-01
Updated: 2020-11-27
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:14:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 20
Words: 14,741
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26225497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShadowPorpoise/pseuds/ShadowPorpoise
Summary: How much should really be forgotten?Sequel toIt's Still You,It's Me,andIt's Us,so please go back and read those if you haven't already.
Relationships: Blue & Core!Frisk, Blue & Error, Blue & Fresh, Blue & Ink, Dream & Core!Frisk, Dream & Error, Dream & Fresh, Dream & Ink, Dream & Nightmare, Error & Core!Frisk, Fresh & Core!Frisk, Ink & Core!Frisk, Ink & Fresh, Ink & error, Nightmare & Core!Frisk, Nightmare & Error, Nightmare & Fresh, Nightmare & Ink, Sans & Sans (Undertale), Underswap!Alphys & Blue, Underswap!Alphys & Core!Frisk, Underswap!Papyrus & Core!Frisk, Underswap!Papyrus & Dream, dream & blue, nightmare & blue
Series: Underfakers [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1754032
Comments: 7
Kudos: 41





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Dream!Sans and Nightmare!Sans by Jokublog  
> Ink!Sans by Comyet  
> Error!Sans and Fresh!Sans by CrayonQueen

“How many do you have?” His face was a question. Round eyes, mouth slightly open. And a vague, distant look like he wasn’t really listening, for an answer.

Ink glanced down. “You’d know that better than I do, right?”

Blink. And not a move, not a word to show that he’d heard.

“I mean…” Ink tried to make the effort, to verbalize at the very least if he couldn’t emote. “You feel them all, don’t you?”

Dream’s mouth snapped shut. And in his eyes, the sharp presence of consciousness, of comprehension and all that it was, that it wasn’t.

“No. Not all of them,” on a let out breath like a sigh, like the relief that is defeat.

He was too young to sound like that. But then, Ink didn’t know very much how the young ought to sound. He didn’t think he was old, particularly. But then what point of reference had he, really.

He looked at Dream again. Wondering if that was it. “Neither do I,” he said. “But I try not to think about it.”

“Does that work?” Dream tilted his head, blinking again, and Ink didn’t need to ask what he meant.

“Better than you might think.”

Dream paused, nodded, and went back to his drawing.

Ink wasn’t sure whether he should say what he did next. Only, he wasn’t very good at not saying, when he thought to. “Didn’t we go over all this stuff before. Lots of times.”

Dream didn’t answer, or react much. After all, learning the same things over and over - that was what young people did, wasn’t it? Till they remembered. Till they got older, and forgot them.

That was years ago now, though. Just after - everything. And he didn’t come back much, after that. Ink isn’t sure, when he last saw Dream for more than a moment. They’ve both been working, and remembering, and forgetting a lot of things.

But that’s just part of getting older, isn’t it?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thought I'd kick off part 4 because I felt like writing. But still no guarantees for how often I'll have time in school! (:


	2. Chapter 2

He’s seen it before. The darkness like a shadow no light can swallow. He had hoped he, too, would be swallowed, enveloped by that darkness someday, he and all his unbearable thoughts, the stuff of his fragmented soul, just buried below in that merciful nothing.

Now it just scares him.

It scares him like every part of his own being scares him, like the something used to scare him when it was wrong, when it shouldn’t be something and so he made it into nothing, which is the barely preferable of the two.

Still, it scares him, preferable or no. Like it never did before, or perhaps like it always did until it didn’t, when he forgot what the nothing wasn’t enough to love it, what the something _was_ enough to hate it, to make it nothing in his mind if only there.

Only now it’s coming back. And as he starts to come awake he can just make it out where it retreats once again into forgetting, into forgetting which is a darkness far more complete than any nothing. He looks down at himself, at his own body enveloped, cocoon-like in his strings, in these futile instruments of physical destruction. With a couple of snaps he breaks free, panting and shaking and very much something in spite of them, in spite of himself or what’s left of him now that his old self has been swallowed up again, vanished in the darkest darkness of his mind.

Slowly, he puts his head down in his hands. They’ve been more and more frequent lately. The nightmares.

A pen rolls off his lap.

Error doesn’t like clutter. He’ll pick it up later. He’ll write it out later, when he’s more certain that he’s forgotten.

He sets the notebook down. Gets up stiffly, groaning - that’ll be the last time he falls asleep in the rocking chair - and teleports without really thinking.

Ink is awake, naturally. Error isn’t sure if he ever sleeps. He looks like some sort of sorcerer, mixing potions over there, by the water. One of the many waters in the Doodle Sphere.

“D-Don’t tell me you’ve figured out another one.”

“Nope.” Ink doesn’t look up or seem surprised. He’s writing something down in the grass. Error wonders where he gets all the clipboards. He never uses a table.

Error sits down and edges closer, but not too close. You never know when something is gonna explode, not to mention the puking. “Wh-what are you doing, then?” he asks conversationally, and wonders just how stressed he has to be to make small talk with Ink.

Ink’s mouth tightens into a flat line. “I realized I have an anger issue.”

Error grins. “You?”

Ink’s eyes flick toward him dismissively. “Yep.”

“When’d you f-figure that out?”

“Shut up.”

Ink doesn’t usually allow himself to speak so impulsively. It might be alarming if he hadn’t been suppressing his emotions for centuries. As it is, Error doesn’t pay much attention.

“What do you want, anyway? Have a bad dream?”

It sounds more like mockery than concern, but Error’s too tired to take the bait. So, “Yeah,” he says, and his voice shakes more than normal.

Ink has the mercy not to look at him, only gets to his feet with a vial of russet liquid.

“That looks terrible.”

Ink shrugs. Slips it into his sash. “Might be better, though. I’ve gotten to the point where experimenting is more fun than anything.” A slight, nervous smile, and Error’s face softens.

“I’m glad.”

Ink turns to him, suddenly businesslike. “Now. I hope you’re not making yourself unhappy over all that stuff.”

Error has to think for a moment before he responds. “That’s a relative term,” he says finally, with a half grin. “I’d say I’m… r-relatively happy.”

Ink doesn’t pretend not to understand him. They’ve both been incredibly fortunate, all things considered. The artist sighs and shifts awkwardly. “Well… I’ve got to go do some things.” It’s a question, more than a statement, and Error takes the hint.

He gets up, brushing nonexistent dirt from his immaculate clothing. “It’s fine, I was g-gonna go look for Noot, anyway, once it got late enough.”

“K. See you after a while.”

After a while. It’s what you say, when you haven’t got a day or a night to keep time with. Or if you’ve got too many to count.

Error doesn’t know how old he is. He leaves it to kids to keep track of those things, and to any young people who want to be older. But for someone like him, it’s probably best just to forget.


	3. Chapter 3

“It’s normal to have flashbacks once you start accepting what happened,” he says casually. “Not pushing it away so much. Means you're getting healthier.” He’s got his feet up on the table. Somewhere along the line he had to get new shoes, and clothing. The purple absolutely butchers his outfit.

“Healthier, huh?” Error snorts. “Why’s it feel so b-bad then?”

“Now you’ve got it.” Nightmare waves a hand at Grillby. Another round of hot chocolate, no doubt. Monsters can drink alcohol at age eighteen, but Nightmare seems to have forgotten.

“So you’re a real Sans now,” Error teases, and Nightmare flushes, just a little. More goddamn purple. “Hey, can I help it if they’re this generous? They don’t even charge me at the stores here.”

“Or anywhere, m-more like.”

“Nah. Choco-tale is where it’s at. Almost better than home.”

It’s true. Though Error still gets a few nervous glances now and then, they mostly leave him alone if he’s with Nightmare.

Everyone likes Nightmare.

Error scoops his whipped cream off onto a napkin. Nightmare gives him a look, but quickly turns his attention back to his own drink. “I used to get flashbacks a lot,” he resumes finally.

“Do you ever worry…” Error starts before he can lose his nerve. “Do you ever worry people might… h-hate you, if they knew it all?”

Nightmare grins, the scary one. “More like you will. Isn’t that what you always say?”

Error shrugs. Waits for an answer.

Nightmare sighs and plays with his spoon. “I’m kinda lucky,” he says softly, in a more familiar tone. “Dream saw everything I did with his own eyes. Couldn’t lie about it if I wanted to, whatever I might’ve told myself. Not really. So if he hasn’t abandoned me yet, it’s not like…” His voice dies like a fickle wind. For a moment he’s staring at nothing, at something, far away. And when he smiles again, it’s not scary at all. “So… yeah. Have you talked to Ink?”

Error ignores him. He leans forward a little in the booth. “How’re you d-doing, anyway? I heard you guys - ”

Porcelain on wood, and hot chocolate sloshes onto the table. “Look, not everything’s about me, okay?”

Error stiffens, but doesn’t move. He frowns sharply as Nightmare reaches for a napkin. His hand is shaking.

Error watches his face as he cleans it up. “S-Some things are about you,” he says when he dares. And for a moment he sees it again, like he did four years ago in the Swap brothers’ doorway. Something breaking in Nightmare’s face, something he didn’t know was there. But in a moment that impression is gone, like a bad dream, and Nightmare grimaces at him.

“So what about Fresh?” he says, and not even a tremble. “He knows, doesn’t he? Better than anyone else, including you.”

Error doesn’t answer.

Nightmare shrugs. He seems to be done with his drink. “You could talk to him.”

“He’s got enough on his plate right n-now.”

Snort.

“What?"

Eye-roll. “Nothing, just… He basically just rides shotgun while Blue does everything. It’s too risky, most of the time. And it’s not like they really need him right now.”

“Well. Maybe that’s the problem.” Maybe he feels useless like Error does, like he’s not good for anything, like he’s not good _at_ anything that would be good for anyone else.

Nightmare is eyeing him warily. “What have you been up to? Haven’t seen anymore hats.”

Error hesitates. “Writing,” he says finally.

“Writing?”

“Y-Yeah. What I can think of. And… what I can’t. Thought maybe if I could r-remember… I’d know what to do.”

Nightmare nods slowly. “Well,” he says finally, and makes to get up. “Are you sure you’re looking in the right place? For yourself, I mean.”

And suddenly Error is in no mood to be lectured. “Were you?” he snaps back, and immediately regrets it. But Nightmare just smirks. Gets up, and heads for the door.

He knows when the conversation is over.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So much for not posting very often? xD

Blue doesn’t let on, but he’s really very anxious. It’s all or nothing with him, all or nothing’s worth doing. Not if it doesn’t take all of him, all of him at once trying and trying again at just that one thing till he’s done it, or else he hasn’t really done it at all. And if he hasn’t done it at all, what was the point of trying, if he’s not going to keep trying until he has? He might as well not have, since it amounts to the same thing, _he_ amounts to the same thing and so he might as well not either, be there that is.

And truth be told, Blue is afraid. He’s afraid he’ll fail at trying, so he tries. He’s afraid he’ll fail at fighting, so he fights. He’s afraid he’ll fail at caring, so he cares.

And when he cares it’s like the trying doesn’t matter, the failing doesn’t matter only that, only just that one caring if he can get it right, since he can get it right because Blue is good at caring. He’s so good at caring he can care without feeling anything else, without thinking anything else, without worrying about anything else and that’s why he does it, why he cares so he won’t worry, so he won’t be anxious because Blue might not let on, but he’s really very anxious. He’s afraid, of losing control.

Fresh has watched him control whatever he can, from his cooking utensils, categorized by size rather than use, and all in their immaculate holders, to the color-coded socks in his drawer, not folded, only laid out evenly with their matches. Is it any small wonder that he explodes at his brother, when he leaves one bunched up on the living room floor?

But his brother is a variable, his brothers are all variables, that Blue cannot control. And so he contents himself with caring, since the caring he can do, and caring hides the trying, the worry when he can’t.

But not from Fresh. Fresh knows, and not because he saw it, either, in his mind. Fresh hardly sees anything in Blue’s mind, and that’s how he knows that he is worried. Oh yes, however free Blue might seem with his own bodily safety, in his mind it is an entirely different matter. Fresh doesn’t think he’s ever encountered such an insurmountable mental wall as he did on that first day, in Blue’s head. Like the one Fresh put up for Ink, only stronger. Only sterner, and even Fresh can’t break it down. It was almost laughable, when Papyrus got all worried. When anyone thought to worry, about Blue.

Not that people often think to worry, about Blue. He does the worrying for them, for them and not himself, for them _so_ not himself or else he’ll go mad with it, like he did that first time he tried to let go, to let Fresh in and have control, if for only just a moment. And all those blustered reassurances, the overblown confidence meant nothing when his grip began to slip, his control began to waver and he screamed.

Fresh had heard that scream many times before, when he caught someone off guard. He hadn’t planned to hear it now, to catch him off guard although somehow he had, planned or no. Had Blue not known, that he would hear him? That he would see his thoughts like Blue did, that he would know his fears like Blue didn’t, like Blue wouldn’t, even then.

Fresh fled right out of his eye like he’d been burned, like he’d been begged to leave which he was, or what else do you call that when somebody screams just ‘cause you’re there? And then he waited till he stopped, all the shaking and the panting, where he knelt on buckled knees and cradled his own head.

“Sorry.” A word Fresh didn’t expect then, and he crept out, warily, from beneath the desk chair. And, “That was my fault.”

Blue was smiling, a fake sort of smile that means _I’m okay_ when you aren’t. And Fresh knew he never would, be okay that is, with Fresh here, with Fresh _being_ who he was and so he’d leave, he’d leave again when he was asked, when he was told and that’d be the end of it.

“Please, come back. I didn’t mean to scare you.” Blue was beckoning, though he hadn’t got up, and his forehead shone with sweat.

“I scare everybody.” Fresh’s voice is thin, and slightly metallic without a host.

Blue shook his head emphatically. “It’s not you. I just…”

“You… you’re hiding something? In your head?”

Blue thought. “I don’t know,” he admitted at last, and Fresh came a little closer. Watching. “But whatever it is, we can’t keep on like this. Not if we’re gonna make it in the guard.”

The guard. It was a silly dream, back then. To work together, as a team, and fight off potential intruders, like Fresh was, once. Like Fresh is, still. And they made it, at first. Or, Blue did. Without his help because Fresh wouldn’t help, wouldn’t take over enough to help until Blue stopped freaking out when he tried.

“Why don’t you just think, yo, and not so loud this time.” If he could hear his thoughts before Blue meant to think them they’d be in business.

So, Blue tried. He tried as well as anything he tried, and so he succeeded. And Fresh saw the cats, and the birds, the _bugs_ and knew what he was then, why Blue cared then because Blue cares about everyone, not so that they’ll care back only so that he will, and not worry, that he isn’t good enough, that he isn’t useful since he is.

Fresh isn’t sure if Blue knows that’s why he does it. Why he helps, why he works, tirelessly, to care for others and no thought to a return. In fact, Blue doesn’t like it, much, when they do return it, at least not enough that he receives it, that he’s the cared for and not the caring, since then he’d be a burden, then he’d be out of control and Blue is terrified of losing control.

So Fresh helps him, to keep calm. By pretending that he isn’t. Helping, that is. And so Blue doesn’t mind, when Fresh tries not to worry so that he won’t, about what will come next. ‘Cause they both knew that this can’t go on forever. That the trying, the pretending catches up with you.

Blue asked him once if he minded, being here. If he wouldn’t rather be somewhere else, doing something else, being something else than what he was. And Fresh, he doesn’t lie the way Blue does so he says maybe, long as it’s nowhere Ink would make and so he stays.

Blue thought about that for a long time. Right where Fresh could see, in his mind, that he was thinking it. And that’s when things started to change. When Blue stopped arriving early, and leaving late, from work. When he started going other places, started teleporting as often as Fresh would let him which was plenty, to a lot of different worlds. And Fresh, he pretended not to notice, not to know why they were there in all these places that Fresh didn’t know, that Fresh couldn’t know ‘cause Ink didn’t know them, not the way he knew the others ‘cause he made them.

“What if…” Blue asked when they were just getting ready to head back one day, and both exhausted from the trip. “What if Ink made you a place… way better than any of the others, just for you. He’s not bad at making places, you know.”

And Fresh says something predictable, which only makes Blue feel better since that would make him feel more worthless than anything else, if Fresh wanted to leave, because Blue is really very selfish in his caring, and it’s just this sort of selfless suggestion that reassures him that he’s not.

“Do you want hot chocolate when we get back?” he asks next, and Fresh masks his distaste.

“Sure.”


	5. Chapter 5

There was a time when he could touch the light. And more than that he _was_ the light, a reflection in their eyes and in their hearts when they saw it. They called him a blessing, long before he actually was, before he actually felt anything beyond just that little bit he could, the half of it he understood before the rest, before he felt it all and realized what was missing, what part of him was lacking and why he couldn’t really be a blessing, not on his own, and so he stopped being one.

And for the first time he saw not only the darkness but the light, as it truly was, alone and cold without it. That the darkness, in eclipsing the light far from destroyed it but _created_ it, really, that the light was nothing without it, _he_ was nothing without it, that he _was_ without it more surely than any other.

And then the darkness was there. Like a welcoming shadow over the cold, piercing light of his soul and he clung to it like a shroud, like a protection from himself, from seeing himself and was safe.

Toxic, they called it. That film of gray over the gleaming gold from his soul. It would heal itself, they said. That’s what happened for most people, once Fresh let them alone.

But Dream wasn’t most people. And his soul wasn’t like the others.

And the darkness itself, the kind that sees you ‘cause it’s close - that darkness watched him. Oh, you can hide there, in the dark, and it won’t let on it sees you but it does, it watches you and so Dream let it, let it worry and and work itself to death trying to fix him, to provide the perfect backdrop for him to shine only he didn’t, shine that is.

Dream is done with shining.

And so Nightmare stopped trying, stopped watching only just let him be, let him hide while he did enough for two, the eclipsing and the shining and Dream just watched, just watched like Nightmare watched him, and thought he did a pretty good job.

“Dream. Dream, snap out of it.”

He shakes himself. He’d been daydreaming. Ha.

He crosses over to stand just ahead of his brother. It’s a dismal scene, really. Broken china and retreating footsteps. Dream doesn’t know what happened here. Or even where _here_ is. He wasn’t paying attention. He hasn’t been paying attention for the last several hours. But they work together now, that’s what they decided, to work together and help each other and so he does. Help, that is.

They’re laughing when he leaves the house. All of them. Cold, nonsensical laughter. The only kind that makes any sense.

Nightmare wants to yell at him, and maybe that’s a good thing since Dream can tell. That he wants to shake him, until he’s laughing too. It’s better, than crying.

“That’s not what I wanted,” his brother tells him, and Dream shrugs.

“Me neither,” he says, and Nightmare sighs. He stops, a few feet from the door, and Dream stops too. Waiting.

Another sigh. “Maybe we should just call it a day.”

Dream studies him. The dark purple clothing, beneath the checkered cape. The ungloved hands. The patch over one eye, and a star in the other. He’s like some kind twisted hybrid, who he was and pretended to be, all rolled into one.

Aren’t we all.

Still, he looks exhausted. Dream observes this, in some subconscious, detached sort of way before exhausting him further. “Gonna go mooch off choco-Grillby some more?

He sees it coming before it does. Nightmare’s fist in his face. That’s why he doesn’t fall. Not completely. Or even cry.

“Oh, nice, you feel better,” he observes acidly, and Nightmare hugs him. Pulls him tight against his shoulder and just stands like that.

Dream doesn’t move.

“Sorry.” More biting than a rebuke. The word Dream stopped saying, that Dream can’t say anymore. And he’s crying, too. Nightmare, that is. Dream can’t cry.

“Ahah. You just want people to like you.” Dream knows. Dream knows better than anyone.

Nightmare lets go of him. Wipes at his own eyes. But, “Who wouldn’t?” he gets out, and Dream knows that he’s just fine. Nightmare’s always been just fine. And, “You go on ahead. I’m gonna… make a stop.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What? An update!

He’s been working for a long time.

He thinks maybe he’s never done anything but work, even when he disguised it as play. Even back at the beginning, when he still loved the sight of the colors, the smell of the paint, the _feel_ of it all in that empty cavity of his chest, the way it caked between the joints of his fingers and just _stayed_ there all day, in his chest and on his hands, the residue of _making,_ making anything he set his mind to since he didn’t have a heart to set to it, even back then.

It’s the same now. That rote emptiness, only now he can’t stand it, when it gets stuck to him, the sticky remnants of a picture not worth painting. No, nothing’s really changed, only he has, and not even him but only his perspective because he can see it now. The truth. That he was only ever a soulless shell with nothing inside to let out, to _give_ even when he had to.

And he does have to.

It’s snowing. And only because he made it to, just like this whole universe does only whatever he made it to do and nothing more, since _he’s_ nothing more and so it can’t. He can’t.

“Five years, I said. To make him a place.”

Ink turns his head. He’s not really surprised to find them there. The child that isn’t a child, just like he’s not a child, and hasn’t any excuse for acting like one.

“More than fair,” Ink admits. “But…” And the words come unbidden, like some fragment of his old self still speaking from somewhere inside him, if only at those times he least likes it to. “You could give me five hundred and it wouldn’t be enough.”

“Is that how long it’s been?”

Ink huffs. Sags down against the trunk of a tree. His tree. Folds his knees up and doesn’t hug them. “Longer.”

Frisk watches him from within the deep, unfathomable wells of his eyes. “It must be exhausting for you.”

Ink’s head sort of snaps to the side in an attitude of mock confusion. “You’re older than I am.”

The child smiles. Just a little twist at one corner of his mouth. “That’s how I know.”

The snow falls. Softly into the cavities of Ink’s eye-sockets, where he leans back to look at the sky.

“And that’s why you should know,” the child continues. “Five years of peace is no reason to believe things won’t change.”

“They always do.” Ink closes his eyes. He doesn’t need to ask what Frisk is so afraid of. He’s afraid of it, too. “What will you tell Blue?”

“I won’t be telling him anything particular.”

And that’s fair, too. Frisk doesn’t like to interfere with the stories anymore than Ink does. Not so long as they’re allowed to go on - peacefully, in Frisk’s case. Because Frisk might not be a child now but he was, once. And he knew very little of peace back then.

Ink remembers when he first met the small, monochromatic version of the seventh fallen human. Come to save him like a precious remnant of some broken world. Only Ink was broken too, victim to a more thorough destroyer than Error ever was.

“It’s okay, I should have died too. We all should. But we didn’t. And that’s why we live on here, together.”

Ink hadn’t had his paints yet, then. The words meant nothing to him. And they still don’t, even now. As he sits alone on an empty planet in cold, empty mockery of everything he is and tries to be. It didn’t take him long to realize he was better off alone. How many times have things gone wrong, and only when he wasn’t? Because he chose to not be? How many people has he hurt just by knowing them, and not even knowing them because he can’t, he can’t understand what makes them want to keep going because it doesn’t make him want to, it just makes him tired.

Ink rests his head down on his knees and goes to sleep.


	7. Chapter 7

Sometimes a breeze catches the screen door, and he starts. He’s not sure what for. For his feet, maybe. If he’s awake. But then it’s just the wind, so he sits back down again if he ever got up to begin with.

It’s not like he’s alone. He sometimes wishes he was, when the older outcodes come around. They’ve decided they’re welcome, mostly because Blue said so and when Blue says it’s so it usually _is_ so, no matter what Papyrus might say. And Papyrus doesn’t really mind what Blue says, long as he says it from home once in a while. Long as he says it without some bleeding parasite hanging out of his eye.

There it is again. That slamming in the wind. Well, Papyrus won’t start this time. Won’t get up and make a fool of himself staring at the door. That’s why he’s surprised, when Blue brushes past him on the way to the kitchen. “Hey, bro,” he says with a tired grin. “No work?”

Papyrus started taking regular morning shifts a while ago. He never sees any of them otherwise. “Switched back,” he says, and follows his brother into the kitchen, stretching his arms up over his head. “You’re back early.”

Blue frowns. “I get off at three.” He opens the fridge. Pulls out the milk.

Papyrus rolls his eyes and sits at the table. Puts his head down on his arms and watches. “Gonna cook?”

“Yeah… What, you’ve been waiting? Did you eat at all today?” That shadow of old concern, for once unencumbered by the foreign presence in his eyes.

Papyrus doesn’t bother getting flustered. “Yeah well, least it wasn’t hot chocolate.”

Blue is silent while he makes it, because that _is_ what he’s making, it’s what he always makes when he gets home whether Papyrus is there to witness it or not.

“Where’s Night?” Blue asks.

“You’d know as well as I would. Since you’re like totally an outcode now.”

Blue whirls and from the look on his face he’s expecting a fight. But when it comes to it, he just laughs and Papyrus with him. Because there’s just not enough time these days, to waste it like that. Speaking of… “Blue. Aren’t you forgetting something?” Touching his own eye-socket and glancing at the pair of mugs on the counter.

Blue turns back around with an almost imperceptible shake of his head.

Papyrus decides to wait. Blue comes over to the table with their drinks and Papyrus takes his because no matter what he said earlier, he loves hot chocolate when Blue makes it. “I see,” he says finally. And, “Been a while.” Since it was just them.

Papyrus preoccupies himself with stirring shapes into the bubbles on the surface of his drink. When he looks up again, the shadows are gone and in their place that same old set sort of look Blue gets when he’s getting ready to fix something.

“He needed some time to himself. And me too,” he says finally, almost defensively, like he’s afraid of being challenged.

“I see. Should make it permanent if you ask me.”

Blue rolls his eyes because, of course, he didn’t. Ask him, that is. But there’s no real anger in it, just a listless flippancy to indicate how little weight he assigns to Papyrus’ words, which is somehow even more irksome.

But no matter. If there’s one thing Papyrus is good for it’s apathy. “I mean, you could spend you whole life babysitting,” he goes on casually, like it matters even less to him than it does to Blue. “And I’m not saying it doesn’t… suit you,” he adds, just for the sake of argument. “But” - more earnestly - “I wouldn’t want you to… completely miss out. On life.”

Like you did? When you gave up everything to take care of me.

Blue doesn’t say it out loud but he might as well have, for all it rings in the silence between them. It’s not as though he doesn’t know Blue is thinking it, that Blue knows he knows Blue is thinking it, that Blue can’t help thinking it and feeling guilty every time he catches sight of his brother’s haggard face, since he’s the reason for it. Just like he’s the reason Papyrus gets up in the morning, the reason he smiles and lives at all.

“What about Dream?” Blue asks him.

Papyrus raises a nonexistent eyebrow. “That’s my line. ‘Sides, Dream hasn’t been making anyone smile lately.”

Blue frowns but doesn’t pursue it. He takes a drink, looking even more apathetic than ever.

Papyrus is suddenly angry. “You know you can’t just abandon one responsibility for another, right? Just because you’re bored.” Because he should’ve learned that years ago, when he was child if Papyrus had had the time or will to teach him.

“No one can do anything about Dream.” And I can’t stand to look at him.

Or at least, that’s what Papyrus hears him say. “So you’re just gonna give up?”

Blue shoots him a sharp look. “That’s what you do, isn’t it?”

“Really? Is that what you call this? You think I’m not tired of looking at you, Blue?” And finding someone else in your eyes, every time I do. In more ways than one.

Blue passes a sleeve over his eyes, Papyrus lets out a breath and the fire goes out of him. “You’re the one telling me to give up,” Blue says, and his voice is blurry. “You never support anything I do. You only ever just… put up with it. The way you put up with everything. Because you don’t _care_ about anything.” He starts hiccuping. But they both know he’s only saying this to make himself feel better, to feel less like a failure because Blue does care, about a lot of things, since it’s the only thing he was ever any good at and so he’s got to even if it kills him.

And Papyrus isn’t mad anymore, he’s just worried like he always worries because whatever Blue might have said Papyrus cares too, about Blue anyway, enough to let it kill him if it had to and it almost did. Andso Papyrus comes around the table and embraces him, and Blue sobs into his shirt because he’s sorry, because it’s the first time he’s been alone with his mind in four years and he doesn’t know what to do with his thoughts.

“Can I sleep in your room tonight?” he asks, like he’s nine and not nineteen, and Papyrus tells him he’ll set up the cot.

It’s not time for bed yet, though, not for a while. They make tacos together, for the first time in ages, and for once Papyrus is glad the other two aren’t home yet. He almost forgets they will come home, until he’s about to head upstairs and the door opens.

“Oh. Hey, Dream,” he says. And, “Where’s Night?”

And Dream, he puts them both to shame with that level of indifference in a shrug. “Dunno.”


	8. Chapter 8

A shadow. Looming into the icy stillness of his mind.

“Hey. You good? Or…”

A weight. Upon his shoulders.

“...Ink?”

Limbs. Two heavy to lift. And as one with icy whiteness.

“Oh. Geez.” A rising panic, trembling through the air, in the ground that has never been disturbed since the day it was made. “Maybe I should… hold on…”

An emptiness. In his mind and in his head.

And then it is back again, crunching, breaking through the spell of nothingness and he gasps.

Cold, searing, unbreathable air within his chest. And a small, bony hand at his shoulder.

“Whoa. What’d you do, fall asleep out here?” A muttered curse, and he is vaguely aware of being lifted. Up, into the dizzying atmosphere. “Seriously,” says the voice, and the sound of it makes no sense to him. “This is some kinda irresponsible, you know that? Even for you.”

The snow clumps off him in icy globs. Ink tells his fingers to move. To clench and protect themselves from the chill, only they don’t.

“What even is this place? There’s nobody here.”

Warmth like pain. Like tiny needles in his fingers and his toes. And still that cold air within his chest.

The ground again, beneath his hands and knees. Green and growing. The colors and warmth.

It hurts. And something is rattling.

“What even…” comes the annoyed muttering, and Ink’s sopping scarf is tugged off. He’s somehow colder without it. “I thought you hated white, empty spaces. Is this some kinda therapy I don’t know about?” Sigh. “Was kinda hoping you hadn’t made that one, not gonna lie. I kinda liked it.”

A twisting, a violent heaving in his chest and he retches. Black, slimy liquid. And a defrosted blue that’s more like green, coming out of his eyes.

“Ugh. That is nasty.” But the voice is laughing. “Ink, I swear…” He’s sitting with his knees up like a frog, and giggling like a kid. “You get all worked up over the dumbest things.” And then he’s moving. Getting up. _Leaving._

A fistful of rainbow fabric and a spasm of protest, in his back. “Fresh. Wait. You can’t do that.”

“Do what?”

Ink’s eyes rove over the unfamiliar face. The dark lenses. The uncertain, defensive pout. He lets out a breath, releasing his sleeve and sagging back down. He’s still shaking. “If you keep… I won’t be able to…”

Realization dawns on the other and he sort of swings back into place before him. “Aw, yeah, my apologies man. It’s not like if I hadn’t got a body you’d be just about frozen right now, right?”

Ink shakes his head. Unable to articulate, now, what he means, or even to think of it.

There’s a long silence, in which neither of them moves or says anything more. Ink’s still looking at the ground, and Fresh just waits for him to collect himself. Finally, “Where’s Blue?” he says, and Fresh sort of sneers.

“Probably freaking out by now,” he says, and stuffs his hands in his pockets. A Sans mannerism he picked up after long hours of observation and practice. “So… you good?”

Ink isn’t sure what he is, but he’s pretty certain he’s not _good._ He sits back. Shivering and rubbing the feeling back into his arms. “Yeah.”

“K.” Fresh turns around again.

“But… Fresh?”

He stops. Doesn’t turn.

Ink closes his eyes. “Did you really like it?”

Silence. A rustling of wind. And the footsteps resume. “Don’t get cocky,” Fresh returns over his shoulder, and Ink smiles.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for being patient. I'm finally on holiday break! The next chapter should come very soon.

Fresh looks happy when he gets back. To the tree line, just outside of town where they parted several long hours ago. And Blue just stares at him because that’s not right, Fresh shouldn’t _look_ anything, least of all happy, from the outside. Blue could count on one hand the number of times Fresh has even _felt_ happy, let alone looked it, safely tucked away inside Blue’s head where he’s at least got a reason to be happy, to belong, which he doesn’t when he’s alone on the outside and nothing but a glob of fearful, discarded matter. And through that miasma of worry, of inexplicable rage crowding at the edges of his scarred vision, Blue knows he oughtn’t to think that way at all. And so he changes, and thinks only of what he should, of what he has a _right_ to be angry about because that’s okay.

“You said three hours.”

A globby, inhuman shrug. “Lost track of time.”

And there it is, something he has plenty of right to be angry about and so he doesn’t have to feel bad, feel guilty about what he says next. “That’s no excuse. You’d said you’d be back and so you should be.” With a little stamp of his foot on the grayish grass, and couple of steps forward.

Fresh visibly stiffens. Draws back. And Blue stops. He hasn’t needed to read Fresh’s body language in ages. And since he doesn’t really have a body to begin with, not of his own anyway, that takes some doing.

Fresh won’t leave him long to wonder. “So I’m a little late. What’s your problem, yo?”

And it’s slipping. Blue balls his fists. “You. You’re my problem. Why are you so… why do you make this so difficult? Don’t you know how I’m trying.” Because guilt is the surest barb.

Fresh flinches. Retreating more surely than if he’d turned and run. “I never asked you to try anything for me.” Discarded like a flimsy crutch. “It ain’t none of your business, yo, where I go or what I do. I never asked you for nothing, man, and I got along just fine before you.”

Blue stares with his mouth open. Breath stolen from his chest. “I was worried.” A last, scratchy, voiceless attempt at control.

“So?”

_C-Caring… Doesn’t give you a fr-free pass._

But Blue doesn’t want to think about that, doesn’t want to relive the hearing of those words or to think about who said them. “Where did you go?” he croaks, thinking already that he knows the answer. And, “Don’t go,” which is what he meant to say in the first place, only he might as well have shown him the nonexistent door for all the speed at which Fresh darts through it. And Blue, being just Blue again, left unable to follow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel like Blue, in this story anyway, is the epitome of an enneagram Two. I listen to [this song](https://youtu.be/PrDzd4ufypE) a lot when I write about him.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Told you it would be really soon!

He’s drinking orange juice by the fire when Nightmare gets back. Claims it’s the only thing he can taste. He’s not tasting it now, though. Just dangling the glass idly between two fingers where he sits on the lumpy sofa and stares into the pulsing, vibrant flames in the hearth.

“What’d you do?” he asks without turning or change in expression.

Nightmare kicks his shoes off and scowls. “Nothing. Like usual. You?”

An absent, half smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. “Same.”

Nightmare snorts. “What you’re best at, isn’t it?” he mutters.

And Dream agrees with him because Dream doesn’t think he was ever much good at anything, and so he just laughs and agrees and doesn’t argue.

“Nah I just…” Nightmare flops down on the hearth and folds his hands. “Needed to blow off some steam. Haven’t really… let myself feel bad in a while.”

Dream watches him. His face moves as though he means to speak. But instead he ducks his head, and Nightmare softens.

“Is it any better?”

Dream doesn’t answer. Closes his eyes.

Nightmare sighs and turns to the dancing flames, dwindling already into tired, glowing coals. “Man, sometimes when I think about that bug…”

“It’s not his fault.”

Nightmare clenches his jaw. Scowls down at nothing.

“He only showed me the truth,” Dream whispers, and Nightmare snaps.

“What truth, Dream, that you’re a useless shell of yourself that can’t do anything?” He glowers at Dream now, and is surprised to find him looking back, eye-lights steady and clear like they were before, before Fresh, before Nightmare ever did anything to cloud them over. For a moment they stare at each other. Then -

“Your eye is stuck.”

Nightmare blinks. Rubs it. It has felt strained for a while now. But he can’t remember, how to change it back, from a star.

A hand, on his arm. The closest Dream has come to showing any kind of affection in years. Nightmare fights the urge to shrug it off. But the moment is passed, and Dream takes it back on his own. Absently he frowns. “Night, I… I’ve been meaning to tell you. I’m not really…”

Just then the door bangs open and Blue comes huffing into the room. Takes in the two of them, over there by the fire, and lets out a sigh. Doubles up, panting.

They watch him silently, the guardians of feeling, while he gets back his breath. And when he straightens, at last, he can’t look at either of them. “I... I lost Fresh,” he gasps then.

Nightmare turns back around. No change of expression.

“Night…. Night, listen,” because he can’t ask Dream. Not for this. “We got in a fight and…. And he got away from me and now I can’t find him, Night, you’ve got to help me, please, I can’t leave by myself, you know that.”

But Nightmare is in no mood for this. To pretend, as usual, to overlook the wedge this has driven between them. “No.”

“But Night, he’s - ”

“He’s a parasite. We’re better off.”

Silence. The crackling of the fire. The guardians of positivity sitting motionless in the swap brothers’ living room with their hands folded in their laps.

Blue snaps his mouth shut. “And what are you then, Nightmare? A murderer?”

The room darkens. Hearth snuffed like a candle. Because Nightmare is tired of arguing, of convincing himself that he’s anything more than the sum of what he's done, what he'd like to forget but can't erase. His shadow looms, seeming to fill up the room, swallowing up even Dream’s feeble glow.

“What about it?” he says without moving, and his voice comes from every direction at once, from the deepest shadows in the corners, the fear in the closets, the pain the walls.

Blue’s voice comes dry and cold. “Don’t threaten me.”

And he’s up. And not just Nightmare himself but the darkness around him, the darkness within and without him, the darkness in Blue’s own soul bending at his movement. Dream doesn’t move. He’s reading something, on the couch. Blue didn’t think he ever read, to himself. He doesn’t have time to think about it now though. In a flash, a cyan glow spills from one scarred, scratched eye socket.

Laughter. High, and dancing from every surface. “You don’t want to do this, Blue.”

“Actually,” two femur fences march into life at his feet, “I think I really do.”

Dream is laughing.

And well he might, since he remains untouched throughout the entire altercation. The living room is in shambles, though, by the time they’re through, or not through, since Blue shows no sign of giving up even when his HP trembles at a few meager points and his breath comes ragged where he’s collapsed to his knees. Nightmare hasn’t a scratch on him. One eye still stuck in that perpetual star. Inky fog clinging to the edges of the purple, purple on the fringes of the darkness. But Dream does nothing. Doesn’t even laugh anymore, only just fiddles with the pages of his book, staring down with unseeing eyes.

Papyrus is on the balcony. Coming down, slowly. Through the darkness. It flows to him and through him and from him, no more foreign than his own breath. Nightmare gives way before him, shrinking back, face still wild, gloved fingers like talons and great, phantom tentacles seething. But Papyrus doesn’t go to Blue, doesn’t reach out and heal him. Only just passes calmly through the smoke, the miasma of Nightmare’s overflowing aura to where Dream is sitting. Takes the book from his trembling fingers. Closes it, and turns a dark, unreadable gaze on the others. “Would you mind taking this outside?” he says quietly. “Some of us need rest.”

Blue hiccups. Tears stain their way through the his own blood and dust, clinging his face. Nightmare backs away from him. Chokes halfway to forming no words, and the shadows retreat before he vanishes inside of them.

“So…” Dream turns a little to look at Blue. “About Fresh. Where’d you last see him?”


	11. Chapter 11

There are a lot of reasons Error isn’t in the mood to see Ink, when he arrives. Not the least of which is that splitting headache hovering in the most painful place between his eyes. Not the least of which is that subtle, genuine trace of a smile positively gleaming all over Ink’s face.

Error gets headaches often. Sometimes it’s from straining his eyes to see around the letters, which always seem to glitch into focus just when he’s about to tie off a seam. Other times it’s just a tired headache, the kind you get when you’ve slept too much and not enough at one time, when you start awake because you just can’t stand to stay asleep anymore, to wake up anymore after you’ve slept like that.

But Ink doesn’t notice any of that. Doesn’t even notice the whiteness, the emptiness that usually sickens him so much. Ink has become increasingly expressive in recent years, which wouldn’t be a problem if he wasn’t also simultaneously even less observant, and empathetic, to the emotions others.

Error figures he better tell him. “N-Not really in the mood to talk, Ink,” he informs a bit gruffly, and pinches his nasal bone. Squinching his eyes shut and trying not to see stars. He’s only just sat up in his chair, hunched forward with his elbows on his knees, and he doesn’t even want to think about standing yet.

“Oh, you won’t have to do any talking,” Ink blurts excitedly, and gets down in his space, something he’s usually inordinately careful not to do, crouching down on the floor before him so Error can’t help but look at him, or else keep his eyes shut.

He keeps his eyes shut.

“Error. Error, listen.”

“I _am_ listening,” he grumbles, and takes his hand from his face grudgingly.

An orange swirl and a purplish, greenish star. “Error, I know what to do. About Fresh. The perfect place for him.”

A pang, in his soul. In that deep, vulnerable place Ink knows nothing about.

Error doesn’t want to talk about Fresh. What he made him forget, or remember.

But they’re friends again, now, or trying to be. Ink and Error. And friends listen to each other. So, “Again?” he prods, none too graciously, and Ink rolls his eyes, shifting into a more comfortable, crosslegged position on the floor.

“This time it’ll work. Look, I figured out he wants to be the only thing with color. I think that’s the problem. He liked what I made this time, ‘cause it was so plain. He wants to be _special._ And I can make him that, if I make the rest of it _un_ -special.”

Error had forgotten. The made-up words, when Ink got excited. The way he spoke so freely, too freely, with no concern to how it sounded, to whether it needed to be said at all.

Error is tired.

“So, what, he’d… just l-live by himself, in a boring world?”

Ink frowns. “Well, I haven’t come up with it all, yet, but it’d work if he promised not to… or if I could make him a body of his own. Well, not a real body, but like, something he could…”

“He needs a soul for that, right?”

Ink stops. His arms, with which he had been gesticulating excitedly, fall back down to his lap.

Error shrugs and looks away. “What. I’m just saying. To move the body, he needs a soul. Like, one actually attached to it. And you can’t make a soul on your own. That’s why we’re in this mess to begin with.”

Silence. Emptiness, where there had been color. Stillness, where there had been life.

Error rubs at his own forehead. “Look, it’s… it’s not about making him a place, Ink. He’s got Blue. He doesn’t _need_ anything like that from you. When are you gonna get that?”

“…Whoops.” Ink sticks out his tongue. Sags, in his seat. “Must’ve forgot.”

Error straightens, despite the blaze pain that ignites behind his eyes at the movement. “Ink, I didn’t mean - ”

“No. I mean, you’re right.” He gets up. And there’s something unstable in his step. Error can’t see his eyes. “I wasn’t thinking.”

“Ink for God’s s-sake - ”

“Sorry, I’m feeling a bit… you know how I get here. Shouldn’t have come in the first place.”

“Ink, wait - ”

 _Pop_.

And silence.

Error puts his head in his hands again. “God damn.”


	12. Chapter 12

He’s washing the dishes. Scrubbing them, with one of those scratchy things. Papyrus never did pay much attention to cleaning supplies, let alone their names. Yet, even to him, there’s something about scrubbing dishes with soiled, bloodied hands that seems counterproductive.

“So you’re going with Dream, huh?”

“Yep.” Blue slams another dish into the drainer.

Papyrus leans on the counter. Playing with an unlit cigarette. “Welp. Never seen a fight like that. And I seen a lot of ‘em.”

“He’s out of control.” Another dish. “Shouldn’t even… be here if he’s gonna pull a stunt like that.”

Papyrus whistles lowly. Lights up. Not like his brother can say anything about it, not now.

Blue glances over. “Thought you were gonna step in, for a minute.”

Snort. Like he ever asked him to before. “That what you wanted?”

Shrug. “Wouldn’t have minded,” he mutters, a bit huskily. And keeps washing.

Papyrus isn’t surprised. Nothing Blue says surprises him. Even when it doesn’t sound like Blue, like what Blue is supposed to be. Because Papyrus knows him, like no one else knows him, like no one else can know him or he won’t be able to bear it.

“Figured you started it,” Papyrus says finally, when the last dish is dripping steadily in the drainer, and that’s when Blue lets go. Crumples, right there by the sink. Shuddering great, heavy tears onto his knees.

Papyrus doesn’t comfort him. Only drags on that cigarette and _tsks_. “They’ll all know, sooner or later,” he says instead. That you’re weak. That you’re not nearly as strong, or as loving as you pretend. And maybe then _you’ll_ know. That they love you, too.

Papyrus leaves him alone to get cleaned up. To compose himself, and goes to check on Dream, who is perhaps the most composed of them all at this point.

“It’s alright,” he smiles ruefully, and tugs on his shoes. “I don’t mind. I know it’s my fault when they’re like that.” Because he hasn’t changed at all, really. He still blames himself for it all. Only now he doesn’t care, much. And maybe that’s better.

Papyrus hands him his cloak. “Just be careful. And - if you see your brother, tell him I’m waiting up.”

Dream’s hand trembles again when he takes it from him. Puts it on, and hides beneath the hood. “I will.”

Blue is ready. Dream holds out his hand and Blue takes it. The only one he _would_ take right now. Since Dream owes him. Dream owes him big, and not just for tonight. For giving up, for _hurting_ so that no one else has the right to, not like he does. And Blue feels worse about that than anything else.

“Be safe,” Papyrus says, and Blue closes his eyes.


	13. Chapter 13

Ink knows he’s not alone before he looks. He can always tell when he’s not alone, in the Doodle Sphere. He designed it himself, with no one in mind other than himself, and so he can feel it, that disturbance in the atmosphere, that shifting of the air itself to make way for something other, something foreign to itself, to himself. Because that’s what Fresh is; the first and only other Ink ever made, alone that is. And Ink will never understand him precisely because Fresh is so _other_ , and not the worst part of himself at all, not that fearful, broken part of himself he can shout at so that he won’t have to feel it when he does. Because Ink is plenty of terrible, worthless things that he imagined Fresh to be, that he accused Fresh of being, and Fresh is none of them. Fresh is none of _him_. And so Ink can’t help but wonder what Fresh is here for, in this place not suited, not made for him. And maybe Fresh himself doesn’t know what he’s doing here because he volunteers nothing, besides a strangely hopeful, inquiring look in Ink’s direction when he arrives. And the first, hesitant words from his mouth, from that great, wide, toothy opening in the body-less goop - “Are you okay?”

Because whatever he came here to say, whatever he came here to do, it would of course fade out of mind at the look on Ink’s face, at the look of Ink at all, practically drowning in blue, the dark kind that comes back up.

Ink doesn’t get sick, though. Not in front of Fresh. Not now. Instead he stands straight up, one hand at his chest against the pain, and far taller than Fresh now, without shell and defenseless as he is. “What are you doing?” Cold. Demanding. “You were just here.”

Fresh closes that mouth. Stares at him with that single wide, round eye. It mimics Ink’s bluish triangle, an attempt at empathy that sets Ink’s teeth on edge. “Did something happen?”

“That’s my line.” Ink flings down his broom. Since you can set your own stuff down in your own home. “You wouldn’t be here if something hadn’t. What, Blue get tired of you?”

Fresh just stares at him.

Ink takes off his scarf. It’s hot anyway. And flops himself down on the grass besides the biggest pool, the one he likes best, the one he had before Fresh, back when he knew who he was, and why.

He glances over. Fresh is still there. And watching.

“What? You know there’s nothing for you here, right?” The words taste like metal. “Never was.” He turns back around.

When he looks again, Fresh is gone. He convinces himself it’s relief that weakens him, that leaves him curled on one side.

He’s not sure how long he lies there, only that he doesn’t need that scarf to remember after all, he can remember just fine, what Error said, what Fresh said, what _he_ said no matter how he tries to forget. And maybe in a little while, he’ll take care of it.


	14. Chapter 14

Error isn’t surprised at all, when Fresh shows up. Just exactly at his place in the antivoid, and all wrapped up in a brand new body - one stolen, not borrowed. And Error knows somehow this is his fault again.

A purplish miasma spills around Fresh’s eyes, both of them, obscuring the tortured soul within. And grasped tightly one hand, an old, bent pair of sunglasses. He doesn’t need them here.

“Hey kid,” Error says. And gets up, headache or no. “Was just… th-thinking about you.”

Error knows the next look Fresh gives him, the kind you get when someone tries by sheer force of will to dry their own eyes by meeting yours. And Error moves then, to close the gap between them because Fresh won’t, Fresh is the reason Error won’t, usually, only this time it doesn’t matter. Not really.

It stings a little, his palm, when he rests it on Fresh’s head. And his arm, when he holds him with it. “Hey. Y-You’re okay.” By which he means he isn’t, and _that’s_ okay.

Fresh clings to him and sobs. And wonders why he bothered with hiding behind a face at all if he was going to be this vulnerable.

“You’re okay,” Error repeats, and resigns himself to being physically numb for the rest of his life. And, a little while later, when the sobs are reduced to hiccups, “You know I started r-remembering some stuff?”

Fresh stiffens.

“But I can’t always t-tell what’s real and what’s…” Error sighs. “Wondered if maybe you’d help me with it, actually. Since you’re the only one who… knows.”

Fresh thinks about it. Then steps back, not a little puffed up at the request, and wipes at his eyes. “O-Okay,” he says finally, and Error sticks his feelingless hands in his pockets.

“Great. Only… First, y-you’ve gotta give that body back to whatever poor sap you stole it from.”

Fresh laughs, a spasmodic, shuddering sound. But he nods. “Be right back, yo,” he says, with finger guns and everything.


	15. Chapter 15

“You’re too late. He’s just left,” Frisk tells him when he gets there, to Omega, and Ink doesn’t even have time to figure out why he wanted to come here to begin with.

“Who?”

Frisk gives him a look. “What do you mean, who? Why else would you be here.”

“No, I mean, how do you…?” Ink is completely at a loss. Whatever conversation he meant to have with Frisk, this wasn’t part of it.

A couple of kids clatter over the bridge above their heads. Frisk looks up from his perch on the gray, stony beach. “Yeah, he came and talked to me. New body and everything. Think he wanted me to arrest him, or something. Probably something. Lucky I don’t do that kind of thing. Or not, I don’t know.”

Ink gapes at him.

“Anyway,” Frisk turns his head and fixes him with those great, baleful eyes. “Kinda figured you’d be along after him. Given up already?”

That is exactly what Ink came to do. He grasps broomy tightly against his chest like some kind of defense. “Where’d he go?” he asks instead, much to his own surprise, and Frisk almost smiles. Almost.

“Sent him back to the destroyer, what do you think? You clearly don’t have room for him.”

Ink sees red.

Error doesn’t even have time to dodge. Not that Ink is sure he would have. His reflexes haven’t been the best lately, after all.

“He’s n-not here, Ink,” he says dully, when Ink grasps him by the collar, and doesn’t even complain about the splatter of red paint all down his jacket.

“Why is it always you?” the creator hisses, and Error scowls.

“P-Pretty sure this is my living room we’re standing in.”

Ink lets him go. Steps back. Brandishes his weapon.

“L-Look, we could at least go somewhere we don’t mind destroying before you start with that.”

“That’s all you do,” Ink spits. Eyes wild. “Destroy everything, even yourself and still he comes back to you, like you wouldn’t have hated him even more than me if it would’ve hurt me more to do it.” And with that he lets him have it, one volley after the next, in a blur of familiar, exploding color.

But Error doesn’t throw anything at him. Only just lets them all fall to nothing beneath his strings, and then, in one last, desperate move, he catches hold of Ink’s wrist before he can start again.

Broomy clatters to the floor. “Error, your hand…”

Error ignores him. Makes little difference. It’s visibly blistered already. “Listen,” he says lowly. “You and I both know you c-could win easily right now. I haven’t slept properly in months. I am in an inordinate amount of pain. And th-this is all doing nothing for my headache. But,” and here he sort of chuckles. “Wouldn’t it all be a l-lot faster if we just agreed that I lost and let it go?” There’s something resigned in his voice. And that more than anything he said takes the fight right out of Ink.

“Let go,” the creator says, and not for his own sake. Too afraid he’ll make it worse somehow.

Error opens his hand again with some difficulty. Steps back, wincing. Ink stares at him, and for the first time gets a clear look at his face. The strange light behind in his eyes. The sweat on his forehead. The washed out color of his face

“…You’re sick?”

Error huffs. “D-Did you just notice?”

Ink doesn’t know. It seems like he’s known for a while now. He stumbles back, into the tv. “I’m sorry. I’ll come back.”

“B-Better not.”

Is he teasing? Ink doesn’t know. He just wants to get away.


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was one of my favorite chapters to write. Guess that's why it's a little longer. Enjoy.

At some point they’re just sitting by the sea, and it’s nearly dusk. Blue plays a little with the sand, watching it slip between his fingers, and Dream just watches - the sky, and the water.

“It’s pretty,” Blue says. It’s the first time he’s seen it. “You come here a lot?”

“Sometimes.”

Blue watches for a bit too. “It’s calming,” he says. Because this is the calmest he’s felt all day. He might almost be able to sit still, if he waits a little while. If he can bear to wait a little while.

He glances over at Dream. His face betrays nothing. Stillness, and quiet, without peace. “He really do all that to you?” he blurts suddenly, and Dream’s dim eye-lights flick briefly to look at him.

“Nightmare might know where he is,” the little guardian says, by way of reply. Well, not so little anymore. But Blue can’t help but see him that way. Besides, he’s short. And from Blue, that’s saying something.

“Thought he was mad at me.”

Dream shrugs and turns away again. “Might have calmed down by now.”

Pause. “Wouldn’t you know if he had?”

Dream shifts uncomfortably and reaches for his shoe. Shakes the sand out of it. Calming down and being happy are two entirely different things. Though Dream wouldn’t feel it either way, and Blue knows that. He’s just testing him. And the truth is, Dream knows this whole thing has affected Blue perhaps more than anyone else. Save Nightmare. And neither one of them deserves much what Dream has put them through, even if he can’t find it in himself to care. To feel bad, or to feel anything at all.

“You know they say if you listen in a seashell, you can hear the sea?” Blue is up, and digging around in the sand.

Dream feels himself smile. “Yeah?”

Blue gives him a look that indicates he knows exactly what that tone means and doesn’t care. He keeps looking, dashing up and down on the shore till he gets one. It’s not very big, but it might work. He crawls back over to Dream’s side and hands it to him. “Try it,” he says.

Dream stares at him.

“Come on.”

Hesitantly, he takes it. The light catches in the grooves. But - “We can hear it just fine from here, Blue.”

Pause. And then Blue takes it back. “Well, I’m gonna try it.”

And he does. Sitting still and quiet for a long beat with that shell all pressed up against the side of his head and a strangely intense look on his face.

After a while he pulls away. Chucks the shell back out towards the shore. Watches it bounce, flicking a little spray of sand into the air before landing, harmlessly, by the water.

“Did it work?” Dream asks him, and Blue shakes his head. Silent.

The barest trace of disappointment. Of guilt. Of feeling like he’s the cause of all this and if he’d only -

Dream shuts it off as suddenly as it started, that feeling. Heart pounding, choking on his own breath. Grasping great handholds of shifting sand and trying not to vomit. Because he did it on purpose and he is ready, if not prepared. Ready for the dizziness, the disorientation, the fear like an old friend come back to save him from himself, and that old familiar shadow looming over everything.

Nightmare.

He came in the blink of an eye. That’s all the more time he had to sense it, that little sliver of emotion coming off of Dream’’s soul like a last, deathly convulsion. But Nightmare has been waiting far too long for it to miss it now, to give up before he tries, to find it again.

Slowly, Dream raises his head, and more passes between them in that moment of silence than in a lifetime of words.

“Well?” Nightmare says at last, and he isn’t speaking to Dream. “You coming? He’s probably with Error, since I haven’t felt him at all since he left.”

Blue leaps to his feet. Stumbles over to him. Stops just short, of reaching him. Studies his face.

Nightmare has looked better. Haggard. Bags beneath his eyes. Smoky tentacles only just curling back to purple floating like wraiths at his back. But there is no enmity, no resentment in his look. He steps back a little though, when Blue reaches for him, grasping his hand out of necessity alone, and vanishing into the void.

Dream closes his eyes. Rests his head down upon his knees. Waiting.

 _Shhhhh._ _Pop._

That shadow again, coming up from the sea. And then Nightmare is sitting beside him, alone.

The waves lap on the shore. Nightmare is picking at the little tufts of thick, rough grass between the sand. Blowing through it, and making funny noises. Dream doesn’t feel like laughing. But, it’s funny.

After a while Nightmare gets tired of it. Puts it back. Even though, you can’t really put grass back. He leans back on his hands. “How long?” he says, and Dream straightens a little.

“How long what?”

“How long have you been… better.”

Dream frowns slightly, squinting out at the deep orange of the horizon. “Would be easier to say how long I… wasn’t.”

Nightmare turns. Nods meaningfully. “How long weren’t you better then?”

Dream lowers his gaze. “A few months. Maybe.”

Nightmare turns away. “Huh.”

The waves lap on the shore.

“Why now?” he says, when it’s nearly dark.

Dream sighs. “I tried telling you last night, before…”

Nightmare looks at him again. Dips his head. “Why last night?” he prods, and Dream stares at him.

“I don’t know,” he says.

Nightmare turns away. “Huh.” And, “Wish I’d known sooner.”

Yeah. It makes sense… he’d wish that.

“I’m glad,” Nightmare tells him, just loud enough for him to hear. Since Dream feels nothing.

Sometime during the night he falls asleep. Head tipped against Nightmare’s shoulder, where he sits still and vigilant, gazing at the water’s edge. Light off the moon on the sea, light off the sea refracting in his one good eye-light.

In the morning, he gets up. “Let’s go,” he says.

Dream blinks. Sits up. “Where?” Rubbing his eyes.

“To find Ink. I need to do something about my eye.”


	17. Chapter 17

It’s all too familiar, when Fresh gets back to the antivoid. A clawed purple mess of rejection and resentment, just like he was on that day, so many centuries ago. When, united by a shared concern for someone else, they chose to help each other, so they might know better how to help him.

It backfired. Big time.

Error still remembers the rage, born from pain, that they felt - and provoked. When all he knew was to destroy, and Fresh aiding him in it. Whispering Ink’s secrets in his ear, telling of the special place, the one Ink hoped to save at the expense of his own sanity, and only Error to save him from it. To save him like he saved himself. Like he couldn’t remember saving himself, since Fresh made him forget.

Fresh is sorry for all that now. Probably. Error hasn’t exactly asked him. They haven’t really spoken at all, since that day he turned him out. Until now, maybe.

“I, uh… p-put a pile of scarves over there. Since…”

Fresh crawls gratefully between the folds. It’s only one scarf, really. A blue one, that he made extra long for just such a purpose. A long time ago. If Fresh remembers, he doesn’t say.

But Fresh isn’t the one with memory issues. “So, what’s up?” Fresh is gazing at him expectantly, only the glow of his one eye still visible from the shadows, and two tiny claws grasping at the edges of the fabric.

Error’s mouth twists. He hasn’t exactly prepared beforehand, how to broach the topic. Thing is, with Fresh he doesn’t have to. So he just starts in the middle.

Fresh has mellowed in his… what, old age? The don’t get old, none of them. They just get older. And Fresh is no exception. He’s quieter, and more patient. Not so quick to jump to conclusions, or to laugh. And when they do laugh, it’s not at each other.

By the time Nightmare gets there with Blue, they’ve got things pretty much sorted between them. Fresh is halfway crawled out of that scarf in order to gesture with his claws, and Error is feeling slightly less nauseous.

“G-Guess I’m popular today,” he mutters, and Nightmare rolls his eyes.

“Mind if I leave them with you?”

“Would it m-make a difference if I said yes?”

Nightmare thinks. “Probably not.”

Error grins at him. “Go on then.” He doesn’t comment on his appearance. Nightmare is always going through something or another. Long as he does keep going, Error doesn’t worry about it.

Blue carries on quite a bit, crying and apologizing. Error doesn’t know what he did, but apparently it wasn’t all that, since Fresh only roles his one eye, now a greenish swirl, and says, “It’s ok I wasn’t that mad anyway.” But he doesn’t crawl back into his eye socket.

“Well, you two…” Error gets to his feet. “If you don’t m-mind. I’ve got s-something I gotta do. Want me to put the tv on?”


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Forgot to share [this sketch](https://i.imgur.com/svFXike.jpg) of Knightmare with his starry eye-light by PureDragon!
> 
> So, I've waited a long time to write this chapter. I may or may not have got a bit weepy over it.  
> Was listening to [this](https://youtu.be/1mpQVljAWTY) while I wrote it. 
> 
> It's not over yet, but if you have any thoughts, about this chapter or this series in general, feel free to comment. Helps sometimes to know there are people reading. ^-^

Shame is an emotion almost wholly foreign to Ink, at least by his definition of the word. He rarely takes responsibility for anything, being mostly unaware that he has done it at all. He walks in a fog of oblivion, perceiving only his own lack of perception. He does not often understand the social cues necessary to become embarrassed, nor does he care enough for the opinions of others to succumb to it if he did.

But Error knows, though Ink may not, that _guilt_ is something deeply imbedded in him from the beginning, at his very core when he was made, when he was unmade and passed through into making. It’s in his every effort, his every movement and word, and in the way he shifts away from Error when he comes, just enough so there can be no mistake, no possibility of hurting him by the proximity. He doesn’t want to admit it’s the reason why he’s been avoiding Error, avoiding Dream, avoiding himself in order to avoid Fresh, even looking at him - truly looking and not just thinking, of a made up version safely tucked away and happy, secure in some deep recess of his mind.

“Are you sure you should be here after what happened l-last time?” Error asks, easing down beside him in the pine needles and snow. He tries not to mind. He should be used to it after all, considering where he came from.

Ink hugs his knees. “Hear that from your friend?” His voice is cloudy in the hushed quiet of the forest.

Error sighs, leaning his head back against the tree and gazing at the sky. There are stars here, at least. “D-Dunno if I’d call us friends. But I do think you did a pretty good job on him. He’s a sweet kid, when you let him. But I g-guess you know that.”

Ink stiffens. No one has ever put it that way to him before. Offered him credit for Fresh, rather than blame.

The air is cold. It stings to breathe.

“You know I w-was jealous of you for a long time. ‘Cause you could m-make anything, and I could only destroy. I’d already destroyed everything I loved just so I w-wouldn’t have to love it anymore. S-So I never thought… any less of you for that. It was me. Only one I ever hated.”

Ink leans back too, though he can’t see the sky for the blur. He knows all this already. Or, most of it. Still, it doesn’t hurt to hear it again.

“It’s hard to be different,” Error says simply, after a while, and Ink snorts.

Error smiles tolerantly, but he doesn’t stop. “No, really. I remember back at the labs… I didn’t fit in at all. Seems silly, now, the worries you have when you’re y-young.” He snatches a glance at Ink and finds him staring, eyes like saucers.

“You remember?” he whispers, like if he says it out loud it won’t be true.

Error looks away. “Guess it s-seems really boring to you. I m-mean, you know all this already, right? Y-You’ve made countless worlds. W-We’re all the same, aren’t we? Least at the b-beginning. But to me it f-feels like… I’m the only one… I was the only one.” Gasp. “And like everything I w-went through, was unique. _My_ Papyrus. _My_ Toriel. _My_ Alphys. _My_ human. I knew them, j-just them and not the others, and I was _their_ Sans. Not just…” His voice dies in his throat

Slowly, carefully, Ink reaches for his sleeve. Grasps it tightly. “I’m so sorry.” And so not like himself.

Error huffs a laugh. “ ’s not so bad. I’d rather r-remember the worst than… imagine it.” He wipes at his nose. “Anyway, knowing how… Knowing how I w-was makes me feel even worse about ch-changing, you know?”

Ink doesn’t know. It never occurred to him that Error had ever been anything but Error. Than himself, as he is now. That he had been _normal._ He had always thought they were… the same.

“It’s hard to be d-different,” Error repeats, and Ink looks away. Out into the lifeless, empty wood. “But… it’s not s-such a bad thing.”

“Do you think he knows that?” Ink isn’t sure where the question comes from, nor did he know he wanted to ask it.

“Do you?”

Ink’s gaze shifts to the abundant scarf wrapped freely around Error’s neck. “Oh.” He sniffs and wipes at his eyes. “He came with you?”

A couple of claws and one eye peek out at him.

Ink chuckles. “You hear what he’s saying, Fresh?” He sniffs again. “We’re different. Which is just another way of saying special. Should we record it?”

The twinkle of a smile, in that eye. But no more shapes. He’s laughing, on the inside anyway. Ink can tell. He made him, after all.

The creator sobers a little, letting out a sigh and leaning back again. “Figures it was you. He can’t remember shit on his own.”

Error hits him. A little too hard. Ink comforts himself with the knowledge that it’ll likely hurt Error more than it does him in the long run.

“Well, what do you think?” Ink gestures at the stillness. “Decide you don’t like it much after all?” He giggles, and Fresh climbs over into his scarf for a better look.

“Nah,” he says when he gets one, and Ink’s arm drops back down to his lap.

“Right. Well… you know you can’t stay with Blue, right?”

“I know.”

“Right,” Ink says again.

“Blue doesn’t need me. Maybe one day he’ll realize.”

Ink turns, but it’s hard to see someone when they’re perched on your own shoulder. He makes out a movement like a shrug.

“Yeah,” Ink tells him, because there’s nothing really more he needs to say just now. “Maybe he will.”


	19. Chapter 19

“Dad. What color is love?” His face was a question.

Ink glanced down. Fresh was too young, then, to recognize the brief flit of panic that passed across his face. He was looking at the paints, anyway. “Love? Uh, well, it’s… I think it’s… all of them, I guess.”

“Really?” Fresh’s one eye stretched wider.

Ink shrugged. And Fresh thought maybe that made sense. It was too complicated to be just one.

He hooked his claws around a couple of extra pencils. Back in the early days, when he used to try and draw, too, like Ink did. He wasn’t bad, either. Till he started using colors. Which was… right about then.

“Dad.” It was what he called him. Early on, after he’d seen one for the first time. A dad. On one of the worlds.

Ink didn’t like to correct him.

“Dad, look.”

Ink looked. It was a splatter of colors, Fresh’s first attempt at using them. And not just colors - paints. All of them. Ink let him have some, when he begged. A little row of mini vials all his own, and now completely used up in this mess he called artwork.

“What’s it supposed to be, Fresh?” with barely concealed distaste. And Fresh couldn’t even answer him. He blinked, mouth trembling around the words he couldn’t form. “Here.” And Ink told him how to fix it. How to fix it because it wasn’t good enough. And you never leave a job unfinished.

It never occurred to him that Ink had forgotten all about his own explanation, about the colors. About love. That he’d forgotten because he didn’t know, what its color was. That it had no color. That it’s not a paint, or a feeling, that can be kept in a jar. That it can’t run out, or be refilled. That he could search, and mix, and collect every hue in the multiverse and it wouldn’t change a thing. It wouldn’t change him.

But Fresh isn’t so young anymore. He knows Ink’s reaction to his effort was no more a response to love than his artwork was a picture of it. That Error’s rainbow colored outfits were no more an expression of love than the deep red and black one he made for Nightmare; no more, no less. That words might tell it, works might show it, souls might feel it - but they don’t make it so. And that's why Fresh has stopped asking. Stopped waiting, and watching, for some sign of it he knows won’t reassure him anyway.

He positions himself more comfortably within the folds of Ink’s scarf. Error dozed off beside them some time ago.

It’s good. He hasn’t been able to sleep much, lately.

Above their heads, the stars wink coldly down at them.

“Ink.”

“Fresh.”

“Did you find it yet?”

“…I think so.”

“Me too.”


	20. Chapter 20

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, PureDragon made some adorable sketches of [Fresh](https://i.imgur.com/trZs4a1.png), [Fresh in Ink's scarf](https://i.imgur.com/pIIJwoE.png), and [Fresh in Error's scarf.](https://i.imgur.com/0Xro2Jo.png)
> 
> ...And [I drew one too,](https://i.imgur.com/Z8SZNMs.png) only I'm not an artist so please don't judge me xD

“So.”

Ink didn’t ask Nightmare to come. They just found him here in the Doodle Sphere, when they got back. And the diminutive, golden form of his brother, huddled over by the largest pool. Fresh went to him, right away. And they’re still over there, even now.

“So.”

Error went back to get Blue. Nightmare practically tore his head off for leaving him alone in the antivoid, not that he’d done much better himself, and maybe that’s the problem. Error seemed to think so, but then he was pretty cranky, being woken up before he froze, back on -

But Ink doesn’t know what to call that world, even in his mind. Nothing ever really came of it after all, nothing and whole lot.

“Hey. Squid.” Nightmare snaps his gloved fingers in front of Ink’s face. “You gonna help me here, or what?”

Ink sighs. “You’d be better off asking Fresh, he can do whatever he wants with his eyes. I don’t even think about it.”

“Yeah, you don’t think about much of anything,” Nightmare mutters, and slaps his own forehead again, knocking that stubborn star around in his skull.

“Look.” Ink pulls his hand back from his face before he can hit himself again. “I imagine it’ll fix itself, once you’re not so… stressed.”

“Yeah, when will that be, I wonder.”

Ink softens and pulls out his sketchbook. “Maybe not for a while. Till he can… do what he has to do. And you can let him.”

Nightmare leans his head on one hand skeptically. “That what you do?”

Ink sort of stiffens. He’s never been much of a friend to Dream, More like burden. One Dream hasn’t been shouldering much as of late. Which is why Ink hasn’t done anything about it, the infrequency of his visits.

“You really blame yourself for all of this?” Nightmare doesn’t need words, to understand that sort of response. And strangely, Ink doesn’t mind, for once.

“Don’t you?”

Nightmare studies Ink for a long moment, wondering why he never saw him before, only just now when he’s only got one blurred eye to do it with. “He’s done it to himself,” he says finally, lowering his gaze. “I just hope he can… snap out of it. Someday.”

“And you’ll be there, whether he does or not. Right?”

Nightmare doesn’t answer. He doesn’t need to.

Ink sketches without really thinking of what. “Must be nice,” he says, without really thinking about that, either.

Just then, over by the water, Dream scoops up Fresh like a kitten. Holds him, tightly, to his chest, before setting him down again and getting up. A muted snatch of emotion floats over on the breeze, and Nightmare averts his eyes. Something like remorse. It’s hard to tell before it’s gone again, locked away behind a barrier more sure than stone. “I don’t get it, Ink,” he says tightly.

The artist shrugs. “He’s different.”

“Dream? Or Fresh?”

“Both.”

Nightmare shakes his head. “Sometimes I think he’d forgive his own killer with his dying breath. If he had the chance.”

Ink looks at him. “You’re not a killer.”

Nightmare shifts, awkwardly, and looks away. “Wasn’t talking about me. Dumb squid.”

Ink snorts. Giggles and shakes his head.

“What? What?”

“Nothing, it’s just… You sound like Error.”

Scowl. “Do not.”

“Relax, it’s a compliment.”

“Is it?” Nightmare gets up, heading over to the water. Ink watches for a while. He doesn’t think they speak - Dream and Nightmare. But in a moment they’ve switched places, and Dream is coming back this way.

He stops just short of a comfortable distance. And still sort of facing the other way.

“Been a while since we’ve all been here together.”

Dream turns his head, eye-lights dark and baleful. Absent, like he can’t even see that Ink is looking at him, head tilted a little to one side and an idle pen in his hands.

Ink waits a moment, on the slight chance of a response. Then - “Missed you,” he says, though he never thought to admit it before. Though he never thought he’d need to, before.

Dream seems to focus for the first time, at the sound of those words. A shuddering breath, like he’d forgotten to breathe, and he comes closer. Sits down, and close enough to hug.

Ink doesn’t touch him. He picks up his pen again. If there’s one thing Ink is good at, it’s keeping quiet.

“Really?” The word comes so late Ink can’t hardly remember what it might be in answer to.

He glances up. “Oh. Yes. Of course.” It’s unnerving to look back into eyes that devoid of emotion. Ink fiddles with his pen. “Uhm… so, are you doing well, and everything?”

A trace of a smile. “And everything.”

Ink goes back to his sketching. “Well. I won’t tell you how to feel.”

And the atmosphere shifts. Weakens. “Ink, I… I can’t feel anything.”

A sharp pang, where his soul should be. “I know. Afraid I taught you that one.”

“Maybe you did. But it wasn’t…”

“Fresh?” Ink sets his notebook down. Folds his hands, giving Dream his full attention. “I knew that.”

Dream searches his face. “You did?”

Ink shrugs noncommittally. “He’s pretty easy to blame. For… a lot of things.”

Dream’s face changes. More than it has yet today, anyway. “That’s not what I meant to do,” he whispers, and Ink smiles ruefully. Sighs. “Come here.” It’s so easy. Putting an arm around him, like Dream did for him countless times before, when he was little.

They sit like that for a while. Like that time before, back on the porch in Omega. When things might not have been simpler, but they were different. When neither one of them knew much how to solve their problems any better than they do now.

“How do you do it.”

Ink frowns. “What?”

“Take those… paints every day. When you know it’ll just…” he trails off. Or maybe he doesn’t know what he was going to say.

Ink isn’t sure how to answer, either. So he just squeezes his shoulders. “What about… just a little at a time,” Ink tells him. “Like I do when I get like this.”

“…I don’t know if normal people can do that with their emotions, Ink.”

“Hey. You saying I’m not normal or something?”

That earns something like a giggle. Only, Dream doesn’t stop shaking once he’s done. “No, I mean…”

“Just don’t think about it. Don’t worry about it. Don’t clam up, and don’t seek it out. It’ll come back. Like… Like riding a bike, or whatever.”

Dream sniffs. “I’ve never ridden a bike.”

Ink thinks. “Me neither. But it’s what they always say.”

“Who?”

“People. When they wanna tell you something’s natural enough you can’t forget.”

Dream sighs. “Seems like I’ve forgotten everything.”

Ink thinks of Error, and says, “Remembering takes practice.”

He glances over, down the hill to where Fresh has just clamored up into Nightmare’s eye socket. Something in him wants to panic at the sight, but Fresh is out again in a moment, and Nightmare’s eye-light snapped back to the way it was, not a star in sight.

“Did he just…”

Ink passes a hand over his eyes. “I’m sorry.”

Nightmare is trying to hit him. Chasing him in a circle, through the tall grass.

“Anyway.” Ink pulls away and picks up his notebook again. “It won’t be any one particular moment, when you get it all back. I mean, even if you do have one of those, and you’re crying and slobbering and whatever, it won’t last. So I wouldn’t wait. For something like that.”

Dream exhales and laughs a little, at the end of it. Getting to his feet. “Guess I’ll go make sure everything’s okay.”

Ink gives him the thumbs up. “You do that.”


End file.
